What It’s Like

 

There was a time when I thought I was pretty good at reading people.

I could size someone up in about twelve seconds.

Guy outside the 7-Eleven asking for money?
Probably drugs.

Woman screaming at her kids in Target?
Bad mother.

Man who lost his job?
Must have done something.

Marriage falling apart?
There were signs.

Guy drinking at ten in the morning?
Come on, man. Get yourself together.

I had explanations for everybody.

It is amazing how clearly you can see someone else's life from the comfortable side of the glass.

But do you really know what it's like to wake up inside their life?
Do you know what they carried before you saw them?
Do you know how far they had already walked before they crossed your path?

Most of the time, we don't.

Then life kicked the door open, dragged humility into the room, and said, "You two need to spend some time together."

And suddenly I started meeting people differently.

The guy with the trembling hands wasn't "a drunk."
He was somebody's father trying desperately to make it until bedtime.

The woman crying in the parking lot wasn't unstable.
She had just gotten a phone call that divided her life into before and after.

The man sitting in court wasn't his worst decision.
The kid in treatment wasn't a junkie.
The guy with no job wasn't lazy.
The person who stopped returning calls wasn't necessarily rude.

Sometimes people disappear because surviving takes up all the available space.

I know that now, because eventually I became a few things I once thought happened to other people.

I became the person explaining.
The person apologizing.
The person people whispered about.
The person who needed another chance.
And another.

I learned there is a remarkable difference between knowing what someone should do and trying to do it while standing inside their life.

We love clean answers.

Leave him. Leave her.
Stop drinking.
Get a job.
Call your kids.
Forgive your father. Forgive your mother.
Go to treatment.
Get over it.
Move on.

We hand out instructions for lives we have never had to live.

But human beings are rarely that tidy. There is usually a childhood behind the anger.
A loss behind the drinking.
Fear behind the arrogance.
Shame behind the silence.
A story behind the story.

So before we decide what someone should do, maybe we ask:
Do I really know what it's like?
What have they lost?
What are they afraid of?
How many times have they already tried?

This does not mean every choice is okay. It does not mean people should not be accountable.

Sometimes love means telling someone the truth they absolutely do not want to hear.

But accountability without compassion is just judgment wearing a nicer shirt.

These days, when I see someone unraveling, I try not to finish their story for them.

I don't always succeed. I still judge. I still get impatient. I still catch myself deciding what somebody's problem is before I know their name.

But I catch myself more often.

Because there are lives you cannot understand from across the street.
There are mistakes that look very different from the inside.
There are people carrying things so heavy you would be amazed they managed to put on pants that morning.

And sometimes the person you are certain needs to "get their act together" is using every ounce of strength they have simply to remain here.

Maybe that is what grace has been trying to teach me all along.

It is also what I see every time I open the Gospels. Jesus spent so much time with the people everyone else had already figured out.

The addict.
The adulterer.
The criminal.
The outcast.
The person with the reputation.

He kept moving closer.

Maybe grace begins there. Not by pretending choices do not matter, but by remembering that people do.

So when you see somebody whose life makes absolutely no sense to you, resist the urge to explain them.

Ask yourself one more time:
Do I really know what it's like?
Do I know where they have been?
Do I know how heavy their shoes are?

Most of the time, we don't.

And if life has taught me anything, it is this…

Be careful judging the shoes someone else is wearing.

Life has a way of handing us a pair we swore would never fit.